© 2002 Original Storyline by AlseGold

Well, I wanted this story to be up in more places, since right now, I've lost the original file where it was written. I once wrote a couple of versions of After The Fact, but since then, I've changed the original completely so that it looks like this now. Those of you who've discovered CLAMPESQUE will remember this...and now, is the second place anywhere in this world that's got this fic.

I wrote this because I found out one day that "SakurazUka" is "Cherry blossom grave" and "SakurazAka" is "Cherry blossom hill". I thought it'd be a pity not to use it, and henceforth sprang this. It is NOT a story about theories of destiny and stuff. I can't write heavy stuff. But...enjoy this. You'll be able to spot some evil X parallels along the way.

For Mikuro-san, who likes Fuuma and Kamui as a couple.

After The Fact (Version 3.0)
Prologue: Blame It On The…

It's a really rather curious thing.

Life is full of "only ifs". That's why it's so easy to blame destiny. If not for fate—if not for destiny—if not for God—if not for Some Other Being—

It's comfortable to believe that it is never one's fault, but always that of Someone or Something Else. That way, the responsibility lies another way.
Do we have free choice?

Or is it that our paths were fixed from the moment we were born and perhaps even before that?

The truth, of course, is that there's a judicious mix of both. One has the freedom to choose. That, however, is not quite the same as having the freedom to decide what choices are available. But it is always possible that where there's a will, there's a way. And it must be remembered that in everything there is a purpose, however small and minor, that contributes to part of the whole.

Life is not governed by chaos.

Nor is it accurate to surmise that one has no freedom of choice. That would make destiny pre-ordained, foreordained, and with absolutely no room for manoeuvre.

Then it would have made absolutely no sense for Magami Tokiko to tell Shirou Kamui that he could change destiny. It would have made absolutely no sense for Monou Kotori to leave one final message for her brother and her friend, that destiny was not fixed.

There is a balance in everything. Some people call it between light and dark; others say good and evil; yet others say black and white… They're all saying the same thing, really, and they're all both right and wrong.

The Balance everywhere in the Universe, across the Eternity of Time and more, is between chaos (unlimited, absolute freedom of choice and the twin powers of creation and destruction) and order (law and the big picture). One notes that good and evil, light and dark, black and white, or male and female can fall within either category.

That's what's so terribly difficult to understand.

Earth is a world of absolutes.

Humanity demands that there be absolutes, although they are frequently forced to compromise or else risk war (and sometimes war breaks out because of determination to see absolutes and nothing but absolutes). It is impossible for many to understand that absolutes cannot exist in a world that was created on the premise of a fragile balance. So every time the balance tilts one way, something must occur to help it to tilt the other way in order to maintain this equilibrium. The occurrence and the results aren't always pretty to watch. And sometimes it's difficult to accept that abhorrent things happen as a result of the tilting of the balance.

So it's very easy to blame what-might-have-been on destiny, fate, or The Being(s) Up There.

But is humanity really all that certain that if destiny, or fate, or Whoever (or Whatever…), gave them another chance, they'd take it and make the best of it, putting right what was wrong in the past? If destiny et al even gave them a second lifetime to do so, and granted them their wishes-that-might-have-been-if-not-for-destiny-and-the-whole-schmuck, would they take it?

Of course, it depends on those wishes. And everyone thinks they know best.

Once upon a time, thousands of people died to put the balance right.

Of them, fourteen people stood out, marked by their destiny to tilt the balance.

But though equilibrium was restored eventually, something more was needed. They had lived one lifetime serving destiny twice over—once for the lives they had been born to lead (e.g. as a computer genius par none or a Guardian of an Ancient Tree), and twice for the lives they had been marked to lead (e.g. as a Chi no Ryu, Ten no Ryu, or hapless Kamui). Let them have another lifetime, then, to do what they had not been allowed to. Let them live as normal people, with normal lives, which was what they should have been born to do in the first place.

So the Power(s) That Be allowed it to be so.

But it's really curious how those lives played themselves out. Each soul asked for something different before it went hurtling downwards, back into the mortal world.

One asked to be reborn again with another soul (not one of the fourteen) as brother and sister, as they had been, and to be given a chance to spend that lifetime with a special someone he was never meant to be with in the past.

Another asked to be with a little dog who had been her companion, and to be closer to the age of a young man she had liked as a little girl on earth, and hoped that their paths would cross because she had liked him so much.

A third, who had hardly known what it meant to feel, asked to be given a warm, tender heart, and emotions such as it had felt in the moments before the death of its body in the past.

Most of the other fourteen souls wanted a quiet, peaceful, happy life and the chance to pursue the loves and goals that had been denied as choices to them in the past.

But two souls stood out.

They asked that their memories of their past and what they had done, be given to them in their new lives.

They did not want to forget…

Maybe sometimes it's better for destiny to make the choice, since Man has always done a jolly good job of screwing up his life, all unasked.

Maybe sometimes it's better for Man not to decide what he wants, in case he turns out to be a darned idiot about it.